Sightseeing Around Yazd

The Silk Road Hotel organizes several tours in and around the city. We chose a tour called "Desert II," which takes you out to two very old and abandoned cities made entirely of mud—Kharanaq and Asr Abab. Next to Kharanaq, there's also an old restored caravanserai that's now used for conferences. Here, you can see the irrigation system that helps keep the land fertile for farming. The tour wraps up in the desert—Moghestan—where you can "stroll" through the sand dunes and enjoy the sunset. It usually costs 300,000 riel, including lunch, but we got it for 250,000 riel since we couldn’t get an English-speaking guide. The tour was great, and you get to see a lot of the surrounding nature. There's another tour called "Desert I," which is a bit more cultural as it also covers the beliefs of the Zoroastrians. Originally, a caravanserai served as a resting place for caravans traveling along the famous Silk Road from Europe (Turkey) to China (Xian). From the West, they exchanged gold, silver, jade, wool, wine, spices, and more. In return, the East offered silk, porcelain, spices, jewelry, perfume, and other goods. The Silk Road was a tough stretch through all kinds of terrain and temperatures. It lost its significance in the 1500s when alternative routes were discovered, and goods began to be shipped by sea. Yazd is also famous for its large population of Zoroastrians. Chak Chak is their most significant pilgrimage site, located just 72 km from Yazd. This faith also has an important temple in the city called the Towers of Silence. Yazd is known for having some of the coziest hotels in the country, designed in a traditional style with a lovely courtyard in the middle. Iran has some of the friendliest people, which is a stark contrast to the traffic, where folks are completely wild. They run red lights, honk, and make U-turns whenever they feel like it. Even if you're right in the middle of a crosswalk, you can't count on cars stopping for you. Pedestrians have to zigzag through traffic—preferably quickly. In the first three days we were in the country, we witnessed two car accidents. It's also great to be a driver in Iran, where the roads are fantastic—even far out in the countryside, they're paved. Gas is incredibly cheap. Every car has a gas card that allows them to get 90 liters per month at a very low price—only 5 riel per liter. If you fill up more, it costs about 2.5 DKK per liter.